afrol News, 12 June - Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused Ethiopian troops for atrocious acts allegedly committed on displaced rural people suspected of sympathising with Ogagen National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels in Somali region of Ethiopia.

The United States based body says Ethiopian soldiers are illegally detaining, killing, raping and beating Ogaden people in that region while US government and European Union (EU) are ignoring widespread abuses there.

HRW reports it actually has evidence of committed atrocities, adding that it has interviewed victims who have clearly identified perpetrators as Ethiopian soldiers.

"We found that over last year Ethiopian army has been killing, raping, torturing and systematically displacing civilians in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia," HRW's Georgette Gagnon told BBC's Network Africa programme.

She said there was no doubt about identity of those carrying out abuses. "All victims and eyewitnesses that we interviewed clearly identified the Ethiopian army and soldiers as those who had raped them, for example, who had summarily killed people by strangling, and who had forcibly displaced them and burned their villages," she added.

She cited a recurrent incident where Ethiopian soldiers in response to ONLF activity in a neighbourhood, rounded up villagers and demanded that they handed over the suspects. Failure to do so, HRW says, resulted in village elders and others being arrested, beaten, some being killed.

The body says young people, both boys and girls, are being arbitrarily arrested and accused of being ONLF sympathisers; then routinely beaten in custody, women often gang raped.

According to the group, random arrests made on displaced people were explained to the body by a former judge in the region, who said the army could not tell the difference between rebels and civilians. Ethnic Somali rebels have been fighting in the region for independence, in the past 20 years

HRW maintains that the Ethiopian army is engaged in a deliberate policy of terrorising the local population.

The Ethiopian government has however denied allegations of the mayhem as "old fabrications". Bereket Simon, Special Adviser to Ethiopia's prime minister, said that HRW had based its findings on ONLF propaganda.

"Human Rights Watch is engaged in misinforming the public based on the information of the ONLF, whose forces have been destroyed by actions of Ethiopian government," Mr Simon told AFP news agency.

In June 2007, Ethiopian authorities imposed a trade blockade on large parts of the region, preventing commercial traffic and emergency food aid from entering. The blockade, coupled with droughts over past two years, has created a severe food crisis in Ogaden. Thousands of residents have fled to survive. Many people have been reduced to eating grass.

A survey conducted by Save the Children U.K. reported that 21 percent of children in Ogaden are acutely malnourished, compared to 19 percent in parts of Somalia and 13 percent in Darfur. The United Nations considers 15 percent the emergency threshold.

Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman earlier on claimed, "there is no food aid problem. There is no malnutrition problem."

The government is reportedly forcing untrained civilians into conscription, to fight in Ogaden. Many government workers are said to have fled to neighboring countries.

Ethnic Somali rebels have been fighting in the region for independence during the past two years.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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